Here’s another Marin Headlands wildflower from a recent hike (I’m wondering if my series of small flower paintings would be a good grouping together, framed on a wall?). Flowers like these are so damn cheery. I love them. This morning as I did my regular practice of prayer and meditation, my heart felt so shattered I placed my hand on my chest for comfort, which helps. Sometimes grief just sits on me, like a chunk of granite. Other times it’s in the corner, glaring at me but not possessing me, and I know at some point it will be done with me and head out the door. It’s a conflicted relationship, but I believe full surrender is best.
Note: please check out my events|classes page for info on a show at Terra Gallery in San Francisco next week!
7″ x 7″ watercolor, pen, acrylic ink on paper = $65
Have you ever had Stevie Wonder singing to you in your headphones and managed NOT to dance? (I dare you to try.). This past weekend as I went to my cache of photos of wildflowers from the Marin Headlands, brought out my paints and cranked up the music, I had to take multiple dancing breaks from my watercolor expressions. All my curtains and doors were open, so I went into my bedroom where I could have a private Songs in the Key of Life dancefest. It was great (and terrific exercise), and I gratefully soaked up those moments where life felt like a celebration again. I always feel happy to see the swallows coming back in Spring, too — they collect mud in their beaks at low tide just out my window, to build their nests up on the Barnhill silos. They do this fluttery dance while they harvest the gooey stuff, never quite landing. It’s beautiful and balletic.
So the end result of my painting/dancing afternoon was this guy, complete with its ant visitors. Do head for the hills if you can as the flowers are spectacular. Oh, and one more thing — Alcatraz is partly open again. Please visit, and bring friends, as revenue from this tourist spot supports GGRO (and other GGNRA programs) and we are struggling to survive, due to the pandemic. Thank you.
7″ x 7″ watercolor, pen, acrylic ink on paper = $65
Yesterday I finished up the commissioned painting (which I will post once the loving gift of the artwork has been received) and as I putzed around my studio and sprayed the piece with fixative (outside, very toxic) and waited it for to dry, I pulled out my phone to view my photos and decided to do a quickie watercolor and pastel of the lovely wildflowers just starting to bloom in the East Bay hills at Vargas Plateau near Sunol where I had plopped myself down at a viewpoint hoping to spot the resident Golden Eagles. Saw many more cows than eagles (along with ravens and meadowlarks and red tails and kestrels!), and a bovine portrait or two might end up in a future painting. In that park, ridges of rocks pop out of the hilltops looking like dinosaur spines and since these days parks are way busier than usual, I got to say hello to few hikers and bike riders while there with my scope. I took a few pics of these very pink, small flowers, growing like a mat on the ground, and since my main watercolor supplies live in my home, not my studio, I improvised with colors I don’t usually use, adding chalky pastels once the paint was dry, keeping things quick and spontaneous. It was more a time-filler than anything else, which supports my theory that the less I try to produce “good art,” the better the results as I liked how this one turned out.
And here’s another puzzle — my moods currently ping all over the room, in my time of loss and grief, and I’m mystified at how I can flip from joyful dancing and painting and arting with the tunes of Otis Redding or the Temptations in my earbuds to, 5 mins later, sitting in my studio chair, weeping. We humans are weird. They were good days last week, both out in the hills and in my studio.
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9″ x 9.25″ watercolor, pencil, pastel on paper = $85
